History

In 1962, Italy was in the midst of the economic boom and in the wake of the great reconstruction which began immediately after the war, and the whole country was a building site. The Oil&Gas sector was developing rapidly under the aegis of AGIP but no private company had yet decided to create a business able to respond to the needs of this sector. With an accounting diploma and a number of collaborations with different companies, while working on a natural gas pipeline near Turin Gian Pietro Riccardi had the intuition of what would soon be christened SICIM.

Together with his wife Carla and brother Luigi, with whom he would share objectives and successes, he built a new, effective, punctual, competitive reality devoted entirely to pipeline laying. Aiming to become a leading figure in Europe yet even more so in Italy, of a chapter which privately was still to be written, the Riccardi family laid the foundations for making its mark with a spirit of entrepreneurship, determination and efficiency, focusing on the success of its workers and their ideals and principles.

Having made its name across Italy, and becoming one of the first European companies to boast specialisation in the delicate and complex process of welding, in the Seventies SICIM earned full consecration thanks to the many contracts awarded all down the country.

Important years which allowed SICIM to increase its know-how and achieve the highest quality standards on the market. Starting from trestles and hoists through off-road vehicles and excavators, to the most modern technologies available today.

Thanks to the important role it started to hold, SICIM was contracted to implement its first works beyond the national borders. In 1982 in Algeria, where it was called to tackle the complex construction of 60 km of plants leading to the start of six oil pipelines.

In 1985 the challenging project in Colombia, contracted by Mannesman taking Riccardi and his teams to tackle one of the most complex projects underway at that time. 86 km of route, crossing the Andes. Along with the workers and the ideas, the machines too arrived in South America directly from Italy. Under the management of Riccardi, working non-stop along with the local population and using helicopters to align the pipes to cope with the rugged mountains, SICIM completed the task, demonstrating its competence even thousands of miles from Italy.

Switzerland was the first place where SICIM came into contact with a culture of respect for the territory and the environment it had not seen before. This culture was soon to become an attitude shared across the world, translating into regulatory practice.

The work in this territory is planned side by side with flora and fauna experts. This is the time during which an even stricter internal policy of environmental protection was developed, from fume emissions to avant-garde waste disposal.

The first real challenge in France was the Artère des Plateu du Vexin project above Paris. It was 1999, and the company from Busseto, after a number of minor projects carried out in the early 90s, was contracted to lay 82 km of pipes between Cuvilly and Moussy, and thereafter the complex gas pipeline project near Marseilles, on the Manosque-Entrecasteau route.

This marked the start of SICIM’s consecration in France, where since then it has laid over 800 km of pipelines.

In France SICIM established the first automatic welding school which in just a few months trained 18 new qualified welders to work on local construction sites.

Sicim had been working in the country since 1998, but this is the period which definitively consecrated its position in what was to become the company’s most important foreign market. Having completed the development of Karachaganak, Sicim acquired important contracts on the huge new Kashagan Project, covering all the preliminary works to the complete project development. At the same time Sicim was also involved in the extension of the other Kazakh giant, the Tengiz Field, which was enjoying a new phase of development, the Second Generation Project, laying an important export line (120 km and 40” diameter) and various mechanical activities in the plant and on the field.

After the success of the 48” one, which brought with it a cultural change in pipeline practices, demanding the re-thinking of equipment and logistics, SICIM definitively made its name as leader in the sector, tackling and overcoming the challenge with the 56” pipeline.

In Italian territory, the company laid the first and only natural gas pipeline with this impressive diameter. The section Camisano Vicentino - Zimella laid on behalf of Snam, runs for 40 km.

The 56” challenge was repeated in Germany, in the 135 km of OPAL natural gas pipeline running from Lubmin to Olbernhau, one of the most impressive works in the whole country.

Acquiring large contracts, Sicim inaugurated 9 new branches abroad in 4 years, 7 of which outside of Europe. This was a crucial time in the company’s expansion policy, and in just a short time the company tripled its turnover and took on an increasingly leadership role in the sector, demonstrating its flexibility and organisational and logistics skill.

An EPC project for the construction of a 246 km pipeline (100 km of 30” and 146 km of 36”) to link the existing Naranjos-Tamazunchale line to the El Sauz power plant in Mexico, in just 18 months.

It is probably the most complex and articulated project ever implemented by Sicim: rock, the digging of a microtunnel, 5 residential camps installed along the route and many special points with gradients of over 45 degrees, tackled using cableways were just some of the difficulties faced.

This pipe-layer is a revolutionary machine, representing the most innovative and powerful means in the sector. It was designed by an in-house team of engineers and takes its name from the company’s founders, Gian Pietro and Luigi. Weighing 61 tonnes with a lifting capacity of 98 tonnes, its main characteristic is the fact that it can be disassembled into 3 modules extremely quickly and can be transported by container; this solves 3 problems at the same time: it facilitates transport, prevents human error through the use of the most sophisticated safety technologies and eliminates downtimes. This innovation is part of the company’s research and development investments. Its own experts continuously aim to create new functional machines for the sector it works in, or to adapt those already on the market to its own needs, focusing on fundamental aspects including safety, quality and performance.

The “Sicim Opening 2019” event was an opportunity to present and inaugurate the new space dedicated to the production and logistics. The headquarters in Busseto have now been expanded with a modern touch to enable the company to open up to the world in an increasingly innovative way. The expansion required three years of work, involving 150 suppliers and employing 100.000 man hours, with the aim of obtaining new work areas with a logistical and technological cutting edge level, but above all a healthier and safer environment where to work with more efficiency. The expansion covers an area of 61.000 square meters, among which stands a new building of 14.000 square meters, which hosts the entire sector related to maintenance and movement of the fleet of vehicles and heavy duty equipment. The headquarters of Busseto can now boast a total area of 108.000 square meters.

SICIM opens a new office in Milan hosting the Engineering & Procurement department and from which all EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) projects are coordinated. The new center, which covers an area of 3,860 square meters, encloses the know-how of the execution of EPC projects, as well as the integrated management. Design is an essential activity to provide sustainable industrial solutions and models, alongside the procurement of the materials necessary for the realization of the projects.

In 62 years of activity, over 20000 km of gas pipelines have been laid, and over 100 thousand tonnes of plants and steel structures installed. Today SICIM is world leader and the benchmark in the market for the engineering, procurement and construction of pipelines and oil, gas and water processing plants. It has projects running around the world, and has over 10600 employees working in the 26 branches around the world.